Conventional prior art mass market computing platforms include the well-known personal computer (PC) and competing products such as the Apple Macintosh™, and a proliferation of known palm-top and laptop personal computers. Generally, markets for such machines fall into two categories, these being domestic or consumer, and corporate. A general requirement for a computing platform for domestic or consumer use is a relatively high processing power, Internet access features, and multi-media features for handling computer games. For this type of computing platform, the Microsoft Windows® '95 and '98 operating system products and Intel processors dominate the market.
On the other hand, for business use, there are a plethora of available proprietary computer platform solutions available aimed at organizations ranging from small businesses to multi-national organizations. In many of these applications, a server platform provides centralized data storage, and application functionality for a plurality of client stations. For business use, other key criteria are reliability, networking features, and security features. For such platforms, the Microsoft Windows NT 4.0™ operating system is common, as well as the Unix™ operating system.
With the increase in commercial activity transacted over the Internet, known as “e-commerce”, there has been much interest in the prior art in enabling data transactions between computing platforms over the Internet. However, because of the potential for fraud and manipulation of electronic data, in such proposals, fully automated transactions with distant unknown parties on a wide-spread scale as required for a fully transparent and efficient market place have so far been held back. The fundamental issue is one of trust between interacting computer platforms for the making of such transactions.
There have been several prior art schemes which are aimed at increasing the security and trustworthiness of computer platforms. Predominantly, these rely upon adding in security features at the application level, that is to say the security features are not inherently imbedded in the kernel of operating systems, and are not built in to the fundamental hardware components of the computing platform. Portable computer devices have already appeared on the market which include a smart card, which contains data specific to a user, which is input into a smart card reader on the computer. Presently, such smart cards are at the level of being add-on extras to conventional personal computers, and in some cases are integrated into a casing of a known computer. Although these prior art schemes go some way to improving the security of computer platforms, the levels of security and trustworthiness gained by prior art schemes may be considered insufficient to enable widespread application of automated transactions between computer platforms. For businesses to expose significant value transactions to electronic commerce on a widespread scale, they require confidence in the trustworthiness of the underlying technology.
Prior art computing platforms have several problems which stand in the way of increasing their inherent security:                The operating status of a computer system or platform and the status of the data within the platform or system is dynamic and difficult to predict. It is difficult to determine whether a computer platform is operating correctly because the state of the computer platform and data on the platform is constantly changing and the computer platform itself may be dynamically changing.        From a security point of view, commercial computer platforms, in particular client platforms, are often deployed in environments which are vulnerable to unauthorized modification. The main areas of vulnerability include modification by software loaded by a user, or via a network connection. Particularly, but not exclusively, conventional computer platforms may be vulnerable to attack by virus programs, with varying degrees of hostility.        Computer platforms may be upgraded or their capabilities may be extended or restricted by physical modification, i.e. addition or deletion of components such as hard disk drives, peripheral drivers and the like.        
It is known to provide security features for computer systems, which are embedded in operating software. These security features are primarily aimed at providing division of information within a community of users of the system. In the known Microsoft Windows NT™ 4.0 operating system, there exists a monitoring facility called a “system log event viewer” in which a log of events occurring within the platform is recorded into an event log data file which can be inspected by a system administrator using the windows NT operating system software. This facility goes some way to enabling a system administrator to security monitor pre-selected events. The event logging function in the Windows NT™ 4.0 operating system provides system monitoring.
In terms of overall security of a computer platform, a purely software based system is vulnerable to attack, for example by viruses of which there are thousands of different varieties. Several proprietary virus finding and correcting applications are known, for example the Dr Solomons™ virus toolkit program The Microsoft Windows NT™ 4.0 software includes a virus guard software, which is preset to look for known viruses. However, virus strains are developing continuously, and the virus guard software will not give reliable protection against newer unknown viruses. New strains of virus are being developed and released into the computing and internet environment on an ongoing basis.
Further, prior art monitoring systems for computer entities focus on network monitoring functions, where an administrator uses network management software to monitor performance of a plurality of network computers. In these known systems, trust in the system does not reside at the level of individual trust of each hardware unit of each computer platform in a system.